THE TV WATCH; Meet the New 'Press,' Without the Pinned-Down, Wriggling Interviewees

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

Published: June 30, 2008

There was no distant replay on Sunday's ''Meet the Press.''

Tom Brokaw, the temporary host, did not try to duplicate Tim Russert's trademark custom of digging up old videotape to catch politicians flip-flopping and contradicting themselves.

Mr. Brokaw, the former ''Nightly News'' anchor who will host the program until NBC finds a more permanent replacement for Mr. Russert, made a point of breaking with the past; the first segments were not even taped in Mr. Russert's studio in Washington but at a meeting of the Western Governors' Association in Wyoming. The majestic snow-capped Jackson Hole setting didn't provide for a very exciting political debate, but the changes did suggest just how difficult it will be for NBC to revamp a Sunday news program that was so shaped by the personality and passions of its longtime host.

This was only the third ''Meet the Press'' since Mr. Russert died this month, and in a way it was really the first. The Sunday after he died Mr. Brokaw anchored a special memorial edition of ''Meet the Press.'' And last week's show, which opened with the usual booming voice-over introduction (''This is 'Meet the Press' with Tim Russert. Sitting in today: Brian Williams''), was unfinished business served up as homage. Mr. Williams interviewed the two guests whose appearances had been pre-empted by Mr. Russert's death -- Senator Joseph R. Biden, Democrat of Delaware, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina -- and he stuck to Mr. Russert's original script. It included archival material of Mr. Graham, who now supports offshore oil drilling, back when he didn't. (The current price of oil changed his mind, he said.)

Mr. Brokaw proved himself a seemly caretaker. The emeritus anchor didn't try to imitate or compete with Mr. Russert, and he kept the mood at a sober but easygoing tempo. Had NBC immediately tapped some of its more junior stars, like David Gregory, Lester Holt or Andrea Mitchell, to fill in so soon, they might have looked like ambitious careerists auditioning to take over while the chair was still warm.

But in the middle of one of the fiercest and most exciting presidential races in years this ''Meet the Press'' had a little too much comity. Mr. Brokaw, who was a guest speaker at the governors' conference and has a ranch in nearby Montana, invited as his guests two Democrats, Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. of Colorado and Gov. Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming, who, not surprisingly, agreed with each other on the economy, energy policy and the war and at times finished each other's sentences, a little like the medley-singing Sweeney Sisters in the old ''Saturday Night Live'' skit.

Mr. Brokaw asked them whether they would accept nuclear power plants in their states as an alternative energy source for oil. The governors allowed that nuclear power would be a necessary component in a national energy policy but adroitly sidestepped answering whether they would allow nuclear plants in their own backyards.

Mr. Brokaw also spoke to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California in a segment he taped there earlier. Despite his state's rocky economy and huge deficit, Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, also managed to glide through questioning without saying anything provocative, or even that interesting. He opposes ending the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, which puts him at odds with Senator John McCain, his party's candidate for president.

When Mr. Brokaw asked about the inconsistency, Mr. Schwarzenegger, whose wife, Maria Shriver, is an Obama supporter, gave an unassailable reply. ''That we don't agree on everything, that's clear,'' he said. ''Nor do I with my wife. I mean, it doesn't mean that we should split.''

Mr. Brokaw did spar gently with his last guest: Chuck Todd, NBC's political director, who this year has emerged as MSNBC's most understated star, a master of exit polls, electoral maps and delegate counts. When Mr. Todd asserted quite categorically that Senator Barack Obama would not win Montana and North Dakota, Mr. Brokaw, a native of South Dakota and a veteran of the 2000 election-night fiascos, reprimanded his younger colleague.

''Now be careful about what you say at this stage about what he's going to win,'' Mr. Brokaw said. It was a fair point, except that seconds before, Mr. Brokaw had asserted that Senator McCain had Idaho in the bag.

It's hard to know whether NBC has bigger plans for Mr. Todd, who, like Mr. Russert in his early days as Washington bureau chief, is a political savant first, on-air personality second. But no single journalist in NBC's large pool of talent seems ideally suited to replace Mr. Russert. If that is impossible, then it makes sense to recast the job and return to the early days when guests really did meet the press, answering to a panel of inquisitors who together did what Mr. Russert did alone.